


Dirt

by jdphoenix



Series: Dangers Untold [2]
Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: Gen, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-31
Updated: 2012-08-31
Packaged: 2017-11-13 06:38:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/500581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>First lesson: Fairies bite.<br/>Second lesson: Fairy bites are only half-poisonous.<br/>Not that you'll have time for it to matter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dirt

Fairies bite. That’s the first important thing you learned and your hand still aches from the lesson. That doesn’t stop you from batting your hands around your head when another one buzzes by your ear.

‘Fairies are temperamental’ is the necessary corollary to that first lesson but you never made the leap. This one would have flown on its merry way but now you’ve attacked it and it can’t just let that go. It flies straight up behind you and coasts down so you don’t hear as it glides under your ear to bite your cheek.

You cry out, indignant, and it laughs in your face before flying off.

Next lesson: fairy bites are only half-poisonous.

One bite and you’re fine. Two makes a whole poison and you’re in trouble.

You never really learn that lesson because your brain’s going fuzzy and the hand you reach out to brace you against the wall only slides down it as your body dips. Dust and dirt are knocked from the seams between bricks as your hand passes over. You stumble and momentum takes you a few steps to an opening.

Yes, an opening, that’s what you need, that’s what you’ve been looking for.

The ground tilts wildly and your shoulder crashes into the wall. You roll around the doorway and blink as light hits your eyes. You’re back outside the Labyrinth.

Air bubbles up from your chest and you might laugh except none of your insides will move the way they’re supposed to.

Your foot hits a rock and you fall. The ground hits your back hard and your hair splays out. You don’t know it but it’s twisted around the stalks of some flowers. You can see them when the wind dips them down. The sun shines all different colors through their petals. You want to reach up to touch them but your arms won’t move.

After a while fairies start flying over you. Some laugh, some dance upon your chest or gather together to pull your skin and make silly expressions on your face. The fairies are funny. They make no noise.

That is what you think at least. You don’t hear the rodents scurry or the birds cry or the wind howl or the bugs burrowing in the ground beneath you. You don’t hear your heart either but that’s because it stopped long ago. You are not dead.

You cannot smell the flowers or taste the dryness of your own mouth. You can only see what is directly above you and feel what is beneath you. You are Snow White with only one dwarf to watch over you and not even a glass coffin to keep your beauty forever. It is not so bad as it seemed when you read the story.

Time passes. You do not feel it but it does. One day a fairy lands on your arm and jumps up again right away. You feel part of your arm slide away like a clump of dirt that was crushed in a gardener’s glove.

The fairies gather in a whirl over your head. You know what they have realized. It is happening to you after all, it would be sad if you could not tell.

The fairies still for a moment, frozen in midair and then all at once they scatter. Their tiny feet dance over your body. Your skin collapses into dust. Patches of muscles turned to soil slide away, free from the restraint of your skin. Your bones are hard clay and the fairies have fun picking up pieces and throwing them in the air, at the wall, and watching them crash.

You are dirt. You are not dead. You are the dust on the feet of a boy seeking his brother. You are the soil worked into the hard ground where you once fell. Seeds fall into you and a new flowerbed is born on the Labyrinth’s edge.

The dwarf clears away what is left of the clothes you no longer need and waters your flowers. Your beauty is different, transformed, but it is still there.

Over time you grow thinner. You trickle down deep into the earth when the rains fall. You are caught up in the wake of travelers big and small, mortal and not. Some of you goes into your flowers and journeys to others in other beds on the wings of insects.

You are in every corner of the Labyrinth. You are in the houses of the Goblin City and in the cracks of the throne room floor. You are in the air and in the water. You go into the bricks and mortar in the walls and the paved ground.

You are in the Labyrinth. You are the Labyrinth.

You are not dead.


End file.
